Gottfried Running into Tide Family at Pan American Games
7/26/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
TUSCALOOSA ?? It’s somewhere close to 4,837 miles from Tuscaloosa, Alabama to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but University of Alabama basketball coach Mark Gottfried has discovered that nearly 5,000 miles away in a Pan American city, the Crimson Tide has a presence.
Gottfried is in Rio de Janeiro this week serving as an assistant coach for the USA’s men’s basketball team in the Pan American Games. But nearly everywhere he goes around the campus where the Games are held, he’s running into people with Crimson Tide connections.
Former Crimson Tide women’s basketball player Leslie Claybrook Robinson is officiating the women’s and the men’s basketball games. Former Tide softball player Kelly Kretschman is playing on the USA women’s softball team and former Tide assistant softball coach Karen Johns is coaching the USA softball team. Gottfried has already run into Robinson and Johns as well as Alabama’s head softball coach, Patrick Murphy, who is in Rio to cheer on the play of his former star, Kretschman. Bama’s Kimberly Laing won a bronze medal this week in the women’s 100 meter hurdles. She’s on the Jamaica women’s track and field team.
“It’s been a lot of fun running into all of these people who are or have been connected with the University of Alabama,” said Gottfried by phone Thursday afternoon prior to the USA’s game Thursday night against Panama. “It really makes you proud. We’ve got an international referee, a female, Leslie, who just got finished refereeing the Canada versus Brazil men’s game. She played basketball at Alabama and she’s out there working as an international referee for not only the women’s games but the men’s as well at the Pan Am Games. It’s been great. Alabama has been very well represented here.”
Gottfried has been with the USA’s Pan American Games basketball team since the trials began in Philadelphia, Pa., on July 11. After daily practice sessions in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., the team moved on to Brazil this past Sunday. Its first game was against Uruguay on Wednesday night. The young USA Team lost against the veteran team 81-72. Tuscaloosa’s D.J. White, who plays for Indiana, scored 14 points and had 9 rebounds for the USA to share the team’s top scoring with Oregon’s Maarty Leunen who also had 14 points.
“It’s been a great experience,” said Gottfried of coaching the USA’s team. “International basketball is a lot different, obviously, and we are playing against a majority of players who are in their late 20’s and early 30’s and are playing professionally in other countries and even in the NBA, so it’s been a good challenge for our young guys. It’s been a good experience all around.”
